This is Thirty – Day 90 – Controlled Chaos Travel Planning

Our afternoon was spent next door having lunch with our neighbors. That place feels like my own kitchen now. At 5pm, I was lying under a kid-sized table in a blanket fort I had built with a two-year-old. Then we danced around the room with his little stuffed patchwork elephant and watched the sky turn pink and orange out the living room window as the sun set behind the Duomo. On the way home, Mum called and we started planning her spur-of-the-moment trip in April (so SOON)! So now I’m sitting here with more tabs open than I can count with different train times and companies and the logistics of getting around Italy the easiest way. It looks like chaos – but it’s controlled chaos.

When I plan trips like this, it feels like I have no idea what I’m doing – copying and pasting times and prices, finding discount codes in emails and figuring out how to pick the best option out of the thousands that are there. I have a word doc open right now with indecipherable code in mixed English and Italian. Somehow, when I open this all back up in the morning, everything falls into line, half of it gets deleted, and suddenly the itinerary is there.

Looking endlessly at websites and trying to compare and find the best options will leave people blind. I guess my way to do it is just get everything onto one page. Find some way to organize it that makes you happy – use excel, use colors, fonts, tables (I love tables) and keep pages of different options: Itinerary Option 1 – Two nights in Venice. Option 2 – Two nights in Chianti. It’s easier to delete info you don’t need instead of having to find what you don’t have.

Let’s hope my mess turns to magic by morning 🙂 Then it’s time to start booking.

Also – anyone that knows great places to stay in Rome or Venice, I’m always interested in adding to my lists and discovering new places! Send your recommendations over!